


Underland

by thezerocard



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: A literary influence which you've already guessed, Fantasy, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-03 08:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13337010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thezerocard/pseuds/thezerocard
Summary: In which Juno encounters a rabbit, a caterpillar, a cat, a Duke, a Queen, and another. Most of these are the same person.(written for masqueraided on Tumblr for the 2018 Penumbra Exchange)





	1. Down the Rabbit-Hole (and what Juno landed on)

The sky overhead was bright, cloudless, beautiful; something about it was weirding him out. Maybe it was just that he’d never seen so much of it, unimpeded by buildings, by neon billboards and searching lights. It just went on forever in all directions, that piercing blue. Maybe that was what was bugging him. It was just so  _ same-y. _ Who wanted a sky like that? He turned on the spot, 180 degrees. Same thing. Blue, and blue, and blue, without even a low-atmosphere ship puttering along in the difference.

Juno frowned. Then he turned again, the exact same amount, so he was looking back where he’d started. Fabric brushed against his ankles. He looked down.

The dress he was wearing was simple, but beautiful. Sharp shoulders, a tuck at the waist, subtle embroidery on the bodice in glimmering silver thread, pale blue fabric and a hem that stopped precisely one inch above the tops of his feet.

It wasn’t his, but he recognized it. They’d seen it in a shop someplace, on display, a holo-form that spun slow, then fast, showing the way the flowing fabric spun out like a flower. He’d been hypnotized, covetous. At that moment he’d wanted it like nothing else on Mars. But they hadn’t been able to afford it, because they-- because his—

The memory slipped away like the last drops of whiskey in a broken bottle. He had the dress now. He must have bought it, after all.

It really was a beautiful dress. Without thinking, he did a little shimmy, making the skirt spin up and catch the light. Then, suddenly aware he’d somehow internalized the word  _ shimmy _ , he looked frantically at the space around him for observers.

Flower garden, short hedge. Clear.  _ Oh, thank god.  _ Nobody here. Just him and the rabbit. He thought about doing a little spin, because this skirt was really--

Wait a minute. There was a rabbit.

It was on the other side of a hedge, looking very confused. No wonder-- this was probably the most sun the poor guy had ever seen in his life, not to mention the lack of walls. And smell. 

“Hey there, buddy,” said Juno, creeping closer. “You’re a long way from home.”

The rabbit looked at him with wild eyes, fangs bared. He held up his open palms and kept walking. 

“It’s okay! It’s okay! I’m gonna help, okay buddy? I don’t know how you got up here but-“

The rabbit leaped backwards and dropped suddenly out of view.

“Uh,” said Juno. “Or that.”

When he walked over to inspect the hole, it surprised him. It didn’t look anything like the sewer grates of Oldtown, even though it was about the same size. It was like somebody had bored a perfect circle straight down into the earth and left it, no metal to reinforce it or paint to mark it. It was so deep the bottom was a guess, at best, no safety lights or reflected water to mark the way.

It was weird. That was weird, right? To just have a giant hole in your garden? He wasn’t exactly a green thumb or anything but that seemed like a safety hazard. And the dirt! What was with the dirt here? He’d never seen—

He had moved closer to the edge, glaring down at the darkness like he could intimidate it into some answers. This turned out to be a mistake, because it meant that when the unfamiliar dirt crumbled a little underneath his boots, he was in entirely the wrong position to keep himself from falling into the hole. There was still a moment, a panicked breath where he windmilled his arms to strive for balance, but that brief glimpse of hope slipped away when forward into the darkness.

The breeze moving past his face was warm. As the light fell rapidly away it was hard to even tell which way he was facing, but he managed to right himself, feet downwards so he at least had a chance of absorbing the impact. The skirt of his dress swelled up with air, and his descent halted for a moment, like it might act as some kind of parachute, and he heaved a sigh of relief. And then the fabric slapped upwards, covering his face and arms, and he was falling twice as fast, tumbling over and over, because that was how fabric  _ worked _ . He started screaming and didn’t stop until he landed a couple minutes later. 

 

The landing was...well, softer than he expected or deserved, really. It felt more like he’d tripped over one of Rita’s distractions and face-planted than like he’d been falling for a really excessive amount of time downwards into the earth.

So it still hurt, but all of his bones were intact, and nothing was actively trying to harm him. This last seemed particularly significant, though as soon as he tried to think about it too hard he found himself-- oh no, had he landed on the rabbit? The rabbit came down here first! Oh  _ god _ please let him not have somehow landed on the rabbit in a comically ironic way. Juno scrambled to his feet, only slightly impeded by his skirt, and scanned the spot where he’d landed. Nothing. Not even a scuff mark on the floor.

Well. The silver lining in all this was that he hadn’t accidentally committed rabbitslaughter. The...part inside of the silver lining, the other part that was made of...not-silver, was that he had no idea where he was. 

Overhead, the hole he’d come through was so far away as to be invisible, but there was light coming from somewhere, illuminating the place in a soft amber glow. The room was mostly empty, large, with rounded walls that went all the way up until they faded into darkness without any sign of a roof. In the center of the room there was a table, and on the table were some flowers. A lot of flowers. Like, too many flowers, come on guys, why do you need this many flowers at the bottom of a death pit? He walked closer.

They were a riot of color, purple and pink and orange, heaped so high on the table it seemed like any careless movement might send some tumbling to the floor. Juno stopped a foot away, because careless movement happened around him a lot. Weirdly, there was no smell—at this distance he should’ve been smacked in the face with flower stink, but there was only the slightest hint of sweetness. He leaned in a little.

There was a bundle of roses on the edge of the table, but they were a bright orange he’d never seen before. The rest of the blossoms seemed to be the weird fancy shapes that cost extra in flower shops, nothing he could name. One of them looked kind of like they’d taken a normal flower and then made a stress ball out of it. It was probably super rare or meaningful in flower language, because it looked really, really dumb.

Still no smell. Juno reached out, frowned, then thought better of it. He leaned in even more, raising up on his toes a little, trying to get a better look without taking a petal to the eye. Oh. Well, that would do it.

The flowers didn’t smell like flowers because they weren’t flowers. They were sugar.

Or, mostly sugar. Whatever. Candy. They use sugar in that. Probably the main ingredient.

Anyway they were fake, but very impressively fake, and made even less sense in context because perishable food didn’t get left out on giant tables in empty rooms.

Juno took a step back and looked around, trying to figure out if he’d somehow missed a giant sign saying CAFETERIA or maybe ART EXHIBIT. Nothing. Just the empty walls and the darkness above.

But when he looked back, there was a sign. It was sitting on the edge of the table, propped up among the flowers. In a delicate, curling script, the sign said: EAT ME.

“Are you serious right now?” Juno shouted, somehow overcome with this last straw. He reached for his holster, found only fabric, and settled for gesturing vaguely at the ceiling in annoyed incomprehension.

“This is the worst trap I’ve ever seen! This is literally offering somebody free candy. This is the stuff that you warn four-year-olds about with the help of an animated dog!” He was getting louder, his gestures bigger, but something about the acoustics of this place muffled his voice away. That didn’t help.

“How stupid do you think I am?”

Nobody answered. Not even an echo.

The table was still there, the dumb and excessive amount of flowers, the sign that was incredibly obvious and maybe magic. He breathed in and out and tried to be patient. Nothing moved.

“Worst trap ever,” muttered Juno, and then he stuffed a rose in his mouth.

For a moment, nothing happened. After that moment, it  _ hurt _ , a pain all through his muscle and tendon and bone that made him hunch over and pant, made him bare his teeth and clench his fists. He’d felt something like this as a kid, when he started getting taller (a voice in his head said “You two  _ are _ growing pains,” and then had never been), but they’d only been in one place, a single muscle he could nurse and hold. This was all over and all-consuming.  _ What a way to go, Steel,  _ he thought. _ You really did it. _

And then it was over.

It was only when he stopped growing that he realized he wasn’t any larger than usual, actually; that he’d simply been small before. He looked at the backs of his hands, flexed his knuckles, surprised and not surprised by the scars he saw there. Surprised because he hadn’t noticed their absence; not surprised because he’d had them for years. He looked further down. The skirt hadn’t grown along with him, and he was now showing kind of a lot of calf. And a little bit of thigh.

_ Well, that’s not regulation-length. I’m gonna get so much shit for this, _ he thought, and then couldn’t remember what the regulation was or who he would be getting shit from.

When mysteries happened, Juno liked to find somebody who knew something and then shout at them until it all made sense. Or shout at Rita to hack their stuff until it all made sense. Unfortunately, in this case the only somebody to shout at was himself. It wasn’t improving his mood.

He looked back at the table. The sign was still there, and the flowers, all weirdly expensive and deceptive and delicious-looking. (“Roses and dahlias,” he said out loud, and then made a weird face.  _ Yeah, way to state the obvious. _ )

In the wall on the other side of the table was a door marked “Exit.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he said, and stormed through.

 

On the other side of the door was light. At first, that was all he could take in, the shock after emerging from that dimly-lit room. Slowly the rest filtered in; a gentle breeze, a sound like paper rustling, green beneath his feet and all around him. He was outdoors again, but this was nothing like the garden from before; if anything, it was a jungle, with tall green growths that stretched overhead and swayed in the wind, brushing against each other. There was a smell, too, one that didn’t match what his eyes were seeing. It was a warm and complicated scent, nothing green or growing. It smelled like a place he’d never been, the exotic spices of some far-off planet. He breathed it in while he looked around, searching for any sign of life. Or, failing that, any sign at all.

In the distance, barely visible through the green fronds that surrounded him, was a plume of smoke. Alrighty then. Next stop, smoke signal and hopefully friendly fire-maker.

The walk there was only slightly slowed by the greenery. Most of it went easily under his thick boots, and he relieved a little stress by kicking at everything else. He was kind of surprised that he hadn’t run into any animals. Jungles had animals in them, right? The striped ones? Also probably some small ones? Most of his exposure to jungles was movies and picture books but he felt sure there should be something other than silent plants.

This highly intellectual musing was interrupted when he saw the mushroom. It was...uh. It was a big one. Just a really...wow. Just a really  _ big _ mushroom, twice as tall as he was, like a big purple umbrella just growing right out of the ground. He and Rita together might have been able to wrap their arms around the stem of it, but only just.

What he could see of the smoke cloud indicated that it-- and, he now realized, that incredible smell-- was coming right from the top of it.

He stretched up on his tiptoes and looked over the edge of the mushroom, and his eyes immediately met those of the man who was sitting on the top, with his arms folded, quietly smoking a cigarette in a holder and not taking the smallest notice of him or of anything else. He was lean but soft, with dark hair that fell over one eye just slightly and impeccable blue lip color. He was also dressed in a silver silk robe that looked incredibly out of place on top of what was basically a big fungus.

They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Finally, in a low and languid voice, the man spoke.

“Who are  _ you _ ?”

“Who’s asking?” demanded Juno, an instinct buried far deeper than thought. The man pursed his lips and took a long drag.

“Shah, ” he sighed, lingering on it, and a plume of smoke drifted upwards to join the cloud. Had his lip stain been blue before? It was purple now, deep plum, the shimmering kind that Juno always coveted but inevitably smeared on his shirt cuff and then failed to wash out later.

He was spending a lot of time looking at this guy’s mouth, huh. So much so that he actually startled a little when he spoke again.

“And I ask again. Who, exactly, are  _ you _ ?”

“I’m--” There was a moment of uncharacteristic hesitation. His mind wanted to say one thing and his voice the other, and they were getting tangled up in each other in a way that made no sense at all. Finally he opened his mouth and just let something fall out. That usually worked out okay. “Detective Juno Steel, Private Eye.”

“You sound uncertain, P.I.” Shah took another drag of the smoke, and this time the plume that emerged was aimed directly at Juno’s face. He closed his eyes and breathed in.

“You’ve got to know who you are in this place, or you’ll never get anywhere.”

“I…” Something about the smoke was affecting him. Not like a drug-- he knew  _ that _ particular trick when he saw it-- but something more like a memory. Like the scent was bringing back something he hadn’t thought about in a long time. 

“It’s been a weird day,” he said finally.

“Not for me,” said the man on the mushroom.

“Well, great for you then.” Juno’s scowl didn’t appear to make any impression on him at all. He waited for a moment to see if he was going to see anything else. He didn’t, just continued to smoke his cigarette and look down his nose and be very attractive.

_ I don’t have to put up with this _ , he decided, and started to walk off in literally any other direction.

“Hold on a moment!” Somehow Shah raised his voice to shout without it sounding at all urgent or affected. Juno stopped despite himself.

“What?” It was an angry shout and very obviously so.

“I have something important to tell you.”

He grit his teeth and walked back towards the mushroom. He put his hands on his hips, too aware of the strain his his neck he was getting from looking up at this guy.

“What?”

“Keep your temper,  P.I.,” said the man on the mushroom.

“Is  _ that _ all you had to say?” 

“No.” Shah took another puff at his cigarette, deliberately taking his time, and Juno considered the logistics of climbing up there to punch him in the face. His temper wasn’t keeping so great.

“Pay attention. That’s what I have to say.” And he promptly tossed his head and focused his attention somewhere else, ignoring him completely.

Juno made a noise that wasn’t really a word, but was definitely frustration. It was lost, however, in a rising wave of sound, a white noise that sounded something like crashing waves and something like rustling fabric and ended in a skull-splitting  _ rip _ . He ducked a little, hands over his ears, and the motion must have made him miss something important, because when he looked back up Shah was...different.

He was standing on top of the mushroom now, the full lean length of him, the silk of his robe gleaming in the sunlight. And emerging from his back were a pair of wings. They were golden, with subtle striations of color, and so thin the light shone through them like stained glass. Juno’s breath caught in his throat. Shah met his eyes again, and for once he felt the full weight of the man’s attention.

“Where do you want to go?”

The answer felt like the truest thing Juno had ever said: “Anywhere but here.”

It seemed to please him. He pointed at the mushroom under his feet, first the part in front of him, and then the part behind.

“One side will make you go forward, and the other will make you go back.”

He nodded. The man on the mushroom took flight. He made it look effortless, like everything else, and behind him he left a trail of smoke that smelled like everything Juno wanted. After a few moments, he vanished into the blue of the sky as though he’d never been.

He looked at the big mushroom again. He tugged at it, and a piece came off in his hand. And he made the choice that he always made, the one he had to keep making-- he went forward.


	2. A Cat and a Cup of Tea

When he (Landed? Emerged? Stopped?) came to, it was night. The only illumination was the moon overhead-- he hadn’t realized how much his eyes were used to Martian streets until the moonlight looked so cold in comparison. But he could make out that he was outside, still, in the wilderness someplace, though a different wilderness than the one he’d last seen. The air was clearer and smelled of nothing more mysterious than dirt and greenery. Everything was closer here, like it was trying to keep him out, bars of silver-grey tree trunks and low brush with gleaming thorns. He looked down at his bare legs again. He really wasn’t dressed for this kind of travel.

Thankfully for his shins, though, there was a path. Even in the darkness you couldn’t miss it. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to lay a straight road. The perfect lines of it looked out of place here, but it was reassuring rather than offputting. A little civilization, at last.  
He started walking.

The woods grew brighter around him as he went. He tipped his head up to watch the last of the clouds trail away, revealing a single brilliant moon. The other one must’ve been behind the cloud cover still, but this one seemed a lot brighter than usual. Probably some trick of the eyes out here. Light pollution? That was a thing.

There was a noise just ahead of him, off the path. The sound of a twig snapping. The suddenness of it made him realize how quiet it had been, how weird that was, and he tensed all over. Squinting, he could make out a silhouette in the trees, growing closer-- tall, lanky, dark clothes. A man in a suit, out here in the woods. Sure. Why not.

But as the figure got closer, Juno narrowed his eyes again, confused and unhappy about it.

How could he have thought this guy was wearing a suit? The darkness playing tricks on him, maybe. The dappled light revealed a pale-coloured blouse, a sharp v at the neck, a swath of vulnerable skin. A band around his throat that glittered.

He was probably also wearing pants. Somehow Juno couldn’t quite get himself to look down that far.

The stranger walked-- no, stalked-- no, _prowled_ closer. The light under the canopy made him into something mesmerizing as he moved, striped in silver and darkness. He stopped in front of Juno, but stayed just off the path. He tilted his head to one side. The lenses of his glasses glinted, hiding his eyes, showing Juno only his own shadowed reflection.

He smiled. It was a smile that was somehow wider than it should be, and sharper. Juno swallowed and rubbed a hand over his mouth.

“Hey,” he managed, a little hoarsely. The smile grew bigger somehow.

“Hello,” said a voice like crushed velvet. Then he vanished with a little “puff” of displaced air.

Juno blinked. He waved a hand out in front of him, just to make sure the stranger wasn’t hanging out all invisible and making fun of his stupid surprise face. No resistance. Empty air.

Something tickled the back of Juno’s leg, making him jerk around, one hand at his hip. But there was nothing there-- no person, and not even any animal that could have brushed up against him, no bush he could’ve backed into. Then something moved in the corner of his eye, a swift shadow at knee-height. He whipped back around to where the stranger had been.

The man gave him a little wave hello. So did the tip of the tail which appeared to be emerging from his lower back.

Juno felt like he was maybe being punished, cosmically, for some things he’d read in adolescence. He cleared his throat.

“You have a tail.”

“What, this old thing?” He flapped a hand like a socialite dismissing last season’s handbag. The tail moved in a sinuous curl, then lowered until it was concealed once more behind his left leg.

“Unimportant. What I would _really_ love to discuss…” He trailed off, giving Juno a pretty blatant once-over. “Is why you’re here, detective.”

“Well, the short answer is gravity,” he quipped, eyeing the guy right back. “And I guess I should ask you the same question.”

His eyebrows went up and he touched his collarbone, all, _who, me_? “Why, I live here,” he said.

“In...this forest? You know what, not important. Can you give me directions?”

The man disappeared and reappeared two feet to the left with a soft noise. Juno gritted his teeth and turned so he was still facing him head-on.

“That depends,” said the stranger, “on where you want to go.”

“Anywhere but here.”

“Well, then you can go in any direction, can’t you?”

Alright, he’d set himself up for that one.

“I mean-- out. I want to get out of here.”

He made a little moue and tapped his chin.

“A shame to be leaving so soon. But if out is what you want, then you ought to follow the sign.”

He gestured at a signpost Juno hadn’t noticed before, positioned at a fork in the road that hadn’t been there before. The signs were written in a language he didn’t know, but they were clear arrows pointing in opposite directions.

“That way’s the Duke, and round that way is the Thief.”

“Okay. Well, I’m definitely not gonna go hang out with some criminal, so guess I’m going that way.”

“If you don’t wish to associate with thieves, detective, you’ve come to entirely the wrong place. We’re all thieves here.”

“Well, I’m, you know, enforcing the law, so that’s a problem.”

“Are you?” He reached out and touched the neckline of Juno’s dress, smoothing the fabric so it lay flat. His fingers drifted down to the place where a badge would be, tracing its shape. Juno didn’t stop him.

“It seems to me,” he continued, “That you’ve done a little bit of breaking and entering to be here. If I recall correctly, that is not quite upholding the law.”  
Somehow he made it sound suggestive, teasing enough that it didn’t even raise Juno’s hackles. He swallowed.

“I didn’t. Uh. There weren’t any signs, or anything. Before. And I didn’t mean to come here.”

“Mhmm.” He barely seemed to be listening, his fingers still trailing over Juno’s chest, leaving heat in their wake. When he looked up, his gaze was amplified somehow by the lenses of his glasses, compelling, magnetic. Juno wasn’t sure which of them leaned in.

“I can also see,” murmured the cat, “That you’ve stolen something. You hold it still.”

“You should maybe get those glasses checked,” said Juno.

He threw back his head and laughed. The sound rang out through the silent forest. They were still so close. Juno watched his throat move, the necklace glimmering moonlight.

“I’m not the one missing what’s right in front of my eye, detective.” His brain wanted to call that tone of voice a “purr”, but he rejected it for being a little too on the nose.

“Well, you definitely are a little bit. You know what? I’m just gonna. I’m just gonna go to a place that’s, uh, not here, and be on my way. Thanks for the directions.”

“I suppose I can’t keep you,” he said, though his smile said he’d like to try. “If you ever want to come back--” His tail made a little beckoning motion as he spoke. “You know where to find me.”  
He sure did. He was in no way going to be able to forget this interaction, especially after the sun went down. He knew how his own brain worked.

“Yes, I suppose it’s best we both be going. Goodbye, detective.”

“Yeah, see you. Just-- enough with the ‘poof’-ing, will you? It creeps me out.”

“Alright,” he said with his sharpened grin.

This time, he didn’t disappear. Juno watched as the cat receded backwards into the shadowed trees until the only thing visible were his glasses, silver squares in the satin black of night. He kept moving further away, farther than Juno would’ve thought he could get in a straight line, and they kept getting smaller and smaller. When they were nothing but twin sparks in the distance they stopped, and then-- separated? And then they were moving closer, not lenses after all but glow bugs drifting slowly out into the forest, tiny wings whirring with the effort.

Had they ever been glasses at all?  
He had to get out of this place.  
He started walking.

 

It was not long after the fork in the road that he emerged from the forest path into a clearing. It was more sudden than he felt comfortable with-- one moment nothing but trees on either side, and then in the space of two steps he was somewhere entirely different.

The scene before him was a riot of color and clutter, stunningly out of place in the peaceful forest. A multitude of round tables, each with a different pastel tablecloth, were scattered in a ring on the grass like so many mushrooms. All of them appeared to have been used (dishes piled high, napkins tossed away, the occasional stain) but there was nobody there now. As he scanned the circle he realized none of them even had chairs set up-- with the exception of the table on the far right side. It was lavender, and it had two chairs seated on opposite sides. One of them was occupied.

The gentleman at the table was idly rearranging the place settings in front of him. He was dressed formally, suit and tie, but the whole get-up was such an eye-searing combination of pink and orange that it looked like a costume on him anyway. Part of that was probably also the hat. It was fuschia, comically oversized, and approximately three centuries past being in fashion.

He was kind of working it, though. In like an avant-garde, statement-y way? It really wasn’t fair. Pretty people got away with everything.

In the absence of anything better to do, Juno walked over to stand in front of the purple table and cleared his throat. The gentleman looked up from the dishware.

They looked at each other in mutual curiosity for a moment, and then the stranger said:  
“You could use a haircut, you know.”  
Juno sputtered.

“That’s a heck of a thing to say to a lady you’ve only just met. Some people might call it rude.”

“Some people might also call it rude to show up to a tea party without an invitation.” He grabbed a cup on the table without looking and brought it to his lips, raising his eyebrows pointedly.

“Or _do_ you have one, and you’ve merely been rudely delayed in presenting it?” he inquired, and rested his elbows on the table without any apparent awareness that one of them had tipped over the sugar bowl.

“An invitation?” Caught by surprise, Juno did the embarrassed pantomime of the unprepared: pat the place where a bag would be, front pockets, back pockets. To his surprise, there was something in his back left pocket-- the one he never used, because he inevitably sat on whatever was in there-- and it felt like paper. He pulled it out.

He had no idea when it had gotten there, because he clearly hadn’t written it. But he knew what it said, by heart, because he’d been carrying it-- well, he’d only just found it, he was guessing what it said-- but no, it seemed familiar, he _knew_ this script, this paper worn soft with folding and unfolding, this note he’d never seen before and had seen so many times and he had no idea what was in it but it said--  
It said--  
It said: _I’ll be waiting for you to join me._  
The signature was an indecipherable scrawl.

He looked at it for a long time. Maybe too long, because he was startled when the man at the table set his cup back into its saucer with a loud clatter.

“Well! You brought it after all. You should’ve said! Come on then, sit, sit, the party’s started without you.” His tone (and his eyes) were imperious; Juno found himself moving to sit down across from him without really thinking about it. He folded the invitation back up, following the well-worn lines, went to put it back in his pocket, then blinked. The dress didn’t have pockets, obviously. He tucked it into his bodice.

The Duke-- it must’ve been him, after all, since the sign couldn’t have been pointing anywhere else-- busied himself with the tableware again. He seemed frustrated with the tiny plates, positioning and repositioning them in the center of the table. He placed a teacup in front of Juno, then snatched it away, then put it back in a slightly different place. The teapot was apparently the last straw, however. His host peered inside, made a noise of dismay, and tossed it over his shoulder into the grass.

Juno was beginning to think that his table manners really weren’t up to dealing with rich people.

The Duke lifted his gloved hands to his mouth like a megaphone and shouted towards the center of the ring of tables.

“Ruby! More tea!”

Juno expected some overworked lackey to emerge from the treeline. What he actually saw was an empty tea cart, an old-fashioned affair of reddish wood, suddenly turn 180 degrees and zoom over to them at top speed. It halted in front of the Duke and emitted a chiming noise without any apparent source. It had a little lace doily on top.

They were drinking tea, right? Not anything stronger? And he hadn’t even had any yet. So that was really happening. The Duke was talking to a table.

“Yes, we’ll need a pot for two. Something black for the lady, I think.” Another chiming noise, a different one. “Do you think? Well, I trust your instincts.” A little tinkling bell. “Very well. Go on.”

The Duke turned back to Juno and flashed a smile so bright it could’ve powered all of Old Town.

“More tea, my dear. Hold on to your seat.”

“What?”

The chair he was sitting on shot sideways with such force that he nearly face-planted into the grass. He grabbed the seat with both hands and clung on desperately, fingernails digging into the wood, as they were whisked away from the lavender table and around the ring. Tablecloths flashed by like a pastel kaleidoscope. Across from him, his chair moving at exactly the same speed, the Duke held onto his hat with one hand and the chair arm with another. He looked like a man taking a pleasant stroll. Juno swallowed his scream.

After what could only have been a few moments, but felt like a great deal longer, the chairs slowed to a gentle stop in front of a mint-green table. There were two places already set and a charming teapot in the shape of an apple. The Duke lifted the lid, letting out a waft of steam, to inspect it.

“Rooibos! Delightful as ever, Ruby.” The tea cart chirped at him as it bustled back to the center of the ring.

Juno slowly pried his fingers off the chair, which might never be the same. He took a deep breath.

“What was _that_?”

The Duke replaced the lid of the teapot and began to pour them each a cup. “Why, that was the Ruby 7, my dear. Only the most advanced tea service in the universe. Waiting for the table to be cleared and reset for every course is so tedious, don’t you think? Much more efficient to just move on down the line.”

“Not sure the end justifies the means,” he grumbled, but he took the cup when it was offered to him. He didn’t usually drink anything with health benefits, but he was a lady with manners. Sometimes. He tried a sip. It tasted better than he expected. Then he frowned.

“Not a fan after all?” The Duke asked, watching his expression intently.

“No, tea’s fine. I was just thinking. You’ve got this table set for two.”

His host looked perplexed. “Yes, the two of us. I don’t really hold with extra place settings for decor.”

“But I just got here. Why was this set for two? You were all by yourself.”

“Yes, I was by myself, waiting for my guest to arrive. My singular guest, by the addition of which our party is raised to two.” He raised his teacup in a little toast.  
“But how did you know I’d be coming?” he pressed.

“Admittedly you didn’t RSVP, but I tend to trust in the goodwill of man when I send out invitations. Or of lady, as the case may be.”  
“Invi-- this thing? It’s not an invitation, it’s a letter, and it’s barely--” As he spoke he fumbled the piece of paper out of his dress and unfolded it. He held it up to the Duke’s face. “There. It’s barely even a letter!”

He blinked. His eyebrows went up and the teacup went down.

“You’re right, my dear,” he said slowly. “It’s barely a letter, but I’d say it’s a respectable invitation.”

“What?”

He pulled the paper back to look at it. In golden, embossed letters, it read:  
_YOU ARE INVITED TO TEA._

There was no signature on it at all.

“That’s not what it said,” Juno said hoarsely. “It changed. It was a letter. You left me a letter.”

The Duke’s brows furrowed. He looked a little concerned for Juno’s well-being. He raised one hand to his throat and rested it on the delicate fabric of his cravat. It was a gesture devastating in its familiarity.

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about, darling.”

A bell sounded, deep and sonorous, resonating in every bone of his body. It was so loud it drove every thought out of his head, left him with an ache behind his eyes. He looked around wildly, but when it sounded again he realized it was emanating from the little wooden tea cart. Which was...up on two wheels at the other end of the circle, using one wheel to pull off a dirty tablecloth. The bell rang out a third time, and he belatedly covered his ears, but then it was silent.

“Oh my goodness! Thank you for the reminder, Ruby dear, I would be so lost without you. We’ll have to go quickly, I simply can’t abide being late.”

“Late? For what?” Juno looked back and forth between the man and the cart as though either might answer.

“Our audience at the court, of course!”

“The court? Like a royal, a fancy-- the king’s court?”

The Duke tapped one gloved finger against his lips.

“The _Queen’s_ Court. Goodness, you are new, aren’t you. Not to worry, my dear, I’ll show you the ropes.” He set his napkin on the table and stood, adjusting his suit jacket and the fall of his cravat. Juno tossed his crumpled napkin down and stood as well, much less gracefully, movements jerky with panic.

“Look, I don’t think-- I just want to get out of here, I’m not some kind of--”

The Duke stepped over to him and Juno trailed off. He reached out and took Juno’s hand, then placed it in the crook of his elbow so they stood beside one another arm in arm. The fabric of his suit might have been garish, but it was smooth, a delight to touch.

“If wish to leave, darling, you’ll need the Queen’s permission. And we do have a standing appointment.” Juno looked over at him, realizing for the first time how many inches the Duke had on him. It wasn’t a bad feeling, really. He sighed.

“If she’s the one getting me out of here, I guess it makes sense.”

That got him an amused little snort. The Duke patted his hand and turned them to face the path away from the clearing, tables and tea service and all.

“It certainly does. Besides...haven’t you ever wanted to dine with a queen, my dear?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everybody who's enjoyed this fic, and let y'all know that this is definitely still a work in progress! Chapter 3 is a lot more finished than this one was, so hopefully the final update will take less than...a month, oof.  
> Thanks for reading!


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